Submitted by Amanda Paul on the 2018 winter session program in Tanzania sponsored by the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology…
This week is already off to an incredible start. The night we arrived in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, I had a lot of trouble sleeping and I woke up at 4:50 am and sat out by the fire. As the sun was rising, a huge elephant trumpeted behind me at the edge of the campsite. It ran down the edge of the woods, erupting in noises as it met up with two baby elephants. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen and I was so grateful that I happened to be up to witness it happen as it definitely made being up before 5:00 am worth it. The rest of the day continued in a magnificent manner. We held a huge leopard tortoise, played with dung beetles, saw a group of marabou storks eating a freshly dead wildebeest carcass, saw lions, giraffes, chameleons AND a group of cheetahs!!! I’m beginning to wonder if there’s anything we won’t accomplish here.
In the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, we were introduced to the Maasai Tribe. We witnessed a goat sacrifice and butcher in which at one point one of the Maasai men ripped out a kidney and popped it in his mouth without batting an eye. Yum. As the goat was cooking around the fire we headed to a bomba, or Maasai village. We spent a most of the time playing with the children. They were so intrigued by our cameras. We would take a picture of them, show them and they would start laughing like crazy. That night, a group of Maasai men came and sat with us to talk about their culture. Most of what we talked about revolved around women’s roles and rights. Maasai men have more than one wife and women typically don’t have a voice. Overpopulation is also posing a massive issue for the Maasai People, yet women are told to have more kids because it is a status symbol. They typically cannot refuse because they will not be fed. When a man has eight wives, the children certainly add up. The land cannot support the growing population and they asked us if we had any ideas of things they could do about it.
